I just wanted to start a separate thread for the alcohol addiction thread for those of us who are currently not drinking. I found the other thread to be quite a trigger for me so I stopped going in it much. It's hard to see everyone else drinking and not convince myself to drink. So For me, even if I'm the only one here, I rather keep them separate.

Hello, ladies. I was participating on the other thread before MsWoods started this one. I decided at that time to just not bother reading or posting on an alcohol-related thread because I was restarting the drug Antabuse. I decided to give it another whirl after stopping it after a month at the end of last year. I started to feel really depressed and cut-off from the world.

Well, I am taking the drug and haven't had a drink since last Saturday but already I'm feeling sad. I think there are a few things playing into it and don't think it's just the drug but I'm wondering if I should just try and do this without a chemical agent.

The reason why I like the idea of Antabuse is because it stays in your system for up to two weeks. You can't just decide to not take it for a couple days, go on a binge and then start up again. I am a very impulsive person and I thought the medication would work great for me.

I take meds for depression as well so taking something that tips the scales over to the sad-spectrum is a real drag. I don't know if it's the pill, if it's me not being able to stop the compulsive overeating of all things "bad", or if it's something else "life" related.

So, enough about me. MsWoods, why don't you tell us what's going on with you? What's your story with alcohol? Have you been abstaining long? Give us something great to read so we can share in your good news.

I stopped going on the other thread too because it seemed as though there wasn't any real desire to stop using alcohol to cope with life's problems once the food is no longer an option. I saw my daughter go out on a two day food binge when she stopped drinking. I am an addict and so is she. We live a life that use substances to numb our feelings to cope with the uncomfortable feelings we aren't ready to face.

I am learning to ask myself "what am I afraid of? What lies am I telling myself and others? What do I want? Am I just thinking of myself? Am I selfish in more ways than one?" Today I know I have lots of things I am afraid of and am trying to make a list. Perhaps it will be my new bucket list. Today I know I can be selfish if it means I am taking care of myself so I can live a healthier lifestyle. I do and have lied to myself. Being honest in everything is probably the hardest. The little white lies I tell myself. One little bite of that food won't hurt, or perhaps the glass of wine with dinner. I am starting by not picking up that bite of food and glass of wine. Today I am an addict who is in remission with the help of all the Universal Energy I can tap into to give me strength.

I know alcohol and sugar and grains set me up to fail and I don't want to go back to that life today so I refrain from eating/drinking that stuff. I also take meds for chronic depression, Wellbutrin. It works for me.

Very well said! (And I love your Avi, BTW. Does it change every day on its own?) I totally agree with what you said in your last paragraph, and I too am on depression/mood meds. I take Lexapro and Lamictal (the generics). Now that I'm drying out, I'm also taking Antabuse. I just thought it would be great if it would work without any bad side effects.

I know the starches and the carby-carbs set me up for binge eating and I would be much better off not eating them, but I'm not "there yet." I've "been" there, but not right now. I'm tackling the booze beast this month and as I progress and get stronger, I can take the next step.

I also agree with looking deeply into what makes us tick, like you said. I'm currently going back through my food journals that I've kept since I began Atkins in October of 2009. I can't find the first book but I'm beginning to read through the second and will keep going. I used them like mini diaries so I wrote what I was going through in the margins.

Before I started to do that, I was looking at myself and beating myself up for regaining so much of what I'd lost. I was thinking of how well I had done and now how miserably I'm doing. But reading through the old journals, I see that it was always a struggle and I was never perfect. Not even close! So this is giving me hope that I can get back in control again.

Taking a good, hard look at yourself every now and then is very useful. I think that's one of the worst things that happens during the times that we drink. We don't think, we drink. And I guess that's why we drink. Not just because it tastes good and we want to be free to be social with others who are drinking, we want an anesthetic.

My 2 cents. I'm glad there are a few of us on this non-drinking thread and I thank you MsWoods for seeing the need for a thread just for us.

I agree about the other thread turning into a lot of people wanting to continue drinking but figure out how to lose weight while doing it. I want to stop. At least for now. But It's been proving difficult. I'm just so stressed out, like to the max. It seems to always be something. I can't let myself get as big as I used to be. I need to stop this now.

MsWoods, have you considered Antabuse? If you have medical insurance, there is even a generic pill (which is what I take) and it totally takes the option of drinking "off the table." You go 24 hours without drinking before you take your first pill (or you might seriously regret it), then you can't drink for 2 weeks once you've taken it.

It has to be taken daily. I highly recommend it, especially to someone who is really struggling with the "should I or shouldn't I" dance that we all do in our heads. I hear you when you say your life is stressful. I don't know many people these days who can honestly say that they have a lot of peace in their lives. It's just the way of the world and it just keeps spinning faster and faster. It's a wonder we don't all just fly off into space sometimes.

Have you thought of going to AA or a week in a rehab to get a jump start? Sometimes it helps. My daughter did the rehab for a few days then AA when she got out. The Big Book of AA gives some great guidance and getting a sponsor, that's where you committ to staying dry even for 4 hours or whatever you can handle then call someone else or get to a meeting. It is about learning other behaviors to substitute for the "let's have a drink" idea. I had to figure it out with the cigarettes when I quit them 40 years ago. Sadly I turned to food and gained 80 lbs. this time the food plan I follow is a low carb plan that is part of a 12-step program and alcohol along with sugar and grains/beans/legumes are food I don't eat-drink today, just for today. So even though it is low carb with the fruit, veggies and proteins and fats, I get around 100 carbs of which 30 are fiber. I lost 75 lbs the first year I followed it with a sponsor. I attend my meetings over the telephone and online. They have them at all times of the day.

Yesterday, I spoke with a plastic surgeon about getting my neck/face lift done next month. I have to go back in two weeks to schedule it. I am a good candidate as I am healthy and don't smoke. I have been saving for it for 7 years and figured it was time. My bp is normal, cholesterol normal, sugars normal. It feels good to be normal for once in my life. My one secret vice is chewing sugar free gum. I gave it up Nov 14th and fell off the wagon today. I had a piece this afternoon at work from the stress and then proceeded to have 10 more in the next two hours. Then the gaseous reaction started and it reminded me why I stopped on Nov 14th. I could barely stand myself. The same thing happens with food and alcohol. If I don't talk about what it was like in food hell every so often, I might forget why I stopped drinking and eating certain things.

Wow, Mary. I think that's cool that you incorporate a LC WOE into the 12-step plan. Did you come up with that idea yourself or is this really a program that you found somewhere? I'd like to know more. I'm not big on AA meetings or anything like that, but I am intrigued.

That's awesome about the surgery, too! You saved for a long time and now seems like the right time to get'er done. I hope it comes out just the way you want it to. Just remember it gets much worse before it gets better. Plan to hibernate for a while if you can manage that.

PS: I used to have a really bad sugar-free gum habit and I had to break it. I kept it in my purse and by my bed. I got to the point where I'd be chewing it in my sleep. I kid you not! I would once in a while wake up to find a piece in my mouth. I said ut-uh and cut the cord.

Glad you started a new thread. I followed the other awhile back, but saw where it was going.
Google "Ashwagandha". It's also called "Indian Ginseng" and "Withania Somnifera" (the plant name ).
It was recommended on another site in a discussion about alcohol withdrawal and cravings. It's an adaptogen and I don't really understand how it works. I just know for me, it does. I don't think about drinking, don't care about drinking. I think clearer. I also noticed I got caffeine jitters from my normally heavy coffee habit. I haven't had caffeine jitters in 30 years. So I have cut that back considerably too.
Look it up.
Also take a B-complex AND increase your Thiamine.

Mary, it's scary when something tastes so good that you want it even in your sleep. That's when I feel that they have put something addictive inside it. I know they pay big bucks to Lab people to come up with "flavor enhancers" and stuff that make bad food addictive so you'll want more and so the part of the brain that tells you that you've had enough, never gets to that place and never says, "When!" I hate being a puppet.

Liz, thank you for your suggestions. I had never heard of this stuff and I'm sure someone (or someones) will find that helpful. I'm glad it works so well for you! Maybe if I ever stop the Antabuse again, I'll see about the herb. Sad thing is that with my insurance, drugs are always the cheaper way to go. I wish there was a prescription plan for herbal meds and such.

Hey all - been thinking about joining this thread for a long time, but wanted a few AF days under my belt. Well, here I am, proud to say that I'm starting week #2. This includes a totally dry weekend, which I haven't managed in YEARS. I want to avoid alcohol so that I can get serious about my weight loss. DS#3 is getting married in July, and I can't bear another round of "fat" mother-of the groom pictures!

Kacee! WTG on getting to week two! I'm on day 9 myself and it does feel liberating to be able to say no to yourself and mean it. (I mean, the part of us that wants to drink regardless of how we feel about the idea.)

I'm not. Been dealing with so much but I think maybe I'm at the end of the tunnel. My bathroom is now done! I've been without a shower at my house for 6 months and water for 4, it's all back together now I'm so happy. It was so stressful. My house is now starting to come slowly back together.

Holy cow! Was this all due to a remodel? Were you doing it yourself or did you have help? That's a terribly long time to live without running water. You can work around not having a shower when you must, but how did you cope with no water?

Yes. I live in a mobile home and my bathroom was just rotting underneath me. I was doing it all myself. So right before winter I tore everything out and put new flooring down and a new toilet. Well winter hit, and my lines stay frozen so I said screw it I don't have the money to pay my water bill so I'm not. Well it turned out to be a hellacious disaster and took a lot of money to get the water back on. I didn't have it. I got my settlement last week for a car accident, wasn't much, but enough to get my bathroom working and my water on.

We had about 20 gallon jugs of water we would go fill up at different places so we always had water to wash our hands, flush the toilet, etc... but it really sucked.

Well, I'm so happy for you that you won't need to be lugging water jugs anymore. When we had a terrible snow storm a few Octobers back, we lost power (and so consequently, lost our water too.) Mine was only down for 3 days but I was at the point where I was going to drive south until I found a town that had power, then set up the dog and myself in a nice, cozy motel room. Thankfully, that morning the power returned and so did life as I knew it.

Good for you, that you feel confidant enough to tackle a job like that in the first place! That's a lot of work. I hope you can get the bathroom just the way you want it now that winter is over. Where in TX do you live? I used to live in and around San Antonio in the late 80's-early 90's.

So on the no alcohol front, day 2 and I'm feeling great this afternoon. I'm trying to stay motivated with my food, and need to get back in the gym, but good eating is the most important to me right now.

I got my bathroom sink in today! I'm so happy. I've been in love with Vessel sinks for years, every since I decided I needed to remodel my bathroom, but I just finally made my dream a reality. I'm soooooooooooo excited. Here's the sink
This isnt mounted in my bathroom, it's the picture from amazon. I'm just so excited.

I'm fine. Out of my sleeping pill for going on a week and I sometimes wish I had some booze to help me sleep but it's not a real longing for it, just a thought. I'm still taking the Antabuse and it's really a great thing to have. I am far too impulsive to stay sober for very long without it. I have a bad day and next thing I know, I'm standing in line at the liquor store, waiting to check out.

How is everyone else doing? Please pop in and share what you're feeling and going through right now. Or just post more pics of bathroom fixtures and such!

Love the sink, Michelle. And Cheryl, I hear you about sleep. Not sleeping is my biggest fear, and one of the reasons I started drinking heavily, too. I'm not really a social drinker, but I like to take a BIG glass of brandy to bed while reading. Took me a while to figure out that although I fell asleep easily, the brandy was making me wake up in the middle of the night and not get back to sleep.
I'm still alcohol free and clean eating. Tonight is water aerobics.

Well, when you combine booze and Restoril (or any other sleep meds), ooh boy! I take Benadryl, too. Otherwise, like you, I wake up in the middle of the night. With both of them, I sleep all the way through. With the booze, I fall asleep a lot faster. Oh well. It is what it is.

Booze and sleeping meds are a scary combination. Isn't that what killed Marilyn Monroe? I saw my DD one morning after she combined the two and my heart stopped. She didn't remember how many sleeping pills she took. She could have died. Thank God, she has 15 days sober.